Afro-Europeans

Linguistique et Langues Africaines (LLA) [African Languages and Linguistics] is an international journal for African linguistics, whose main goal is to contribute to a better knowledge of languages spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa, be they vernacular, vehicular or creole, with the exception of local varieties of European languages. We are open to recent trends and all theoretical approaches. The selected articles may be chiefly concerned with linguistic domains (e.g. phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicography and semantics), or include an anthropological component. Contributions providing comparative or typological approaches are also welcome. Junior researchers (e.g. PhD students) are encouraged to submit their contributions to LLA.

Linguistique et Langues Africaines is particularly interested in publishing analyses based on fieldwork data as well as studies relating to little documented or endangered languages and cultures. The journal is also open to contributions that are less concerned with theory, such as working documents or firsthand data; such research will appear in a special “notes and documentation” section. Our journal also includes book reviews.

The languages of the journal are English and French, as well as other major European languages (please consult the editors). Submissions to “Linguistique et Langues Africaines” undergo a double-blind peer review by experts who are not members of the editorial board.

The second issue of our journal is scheduled for the end of 2016.

Capeverdean (CV) is the mother tongue of more than a million people living in, or
originating from, the archipelago of Cape Verde, situated about 500 km west of Dakar
(Senegal). As a Portuguese-based Creole, this language obviously has many Portuguesederived
items in its vocabulary, although there are often significant phonetic changes (see Quint 2000a: 53-139) such as:
CV obi  ‘to hear’ < Port. ouvir
CV nabidja ‘heifer’ < Port. novilha.
Nevertheless, not all CV words derive from Portuguese; indeed, some quite common CV
words can be traced back to diverse African languages, e.g.
CV djobi ‘to look at’ < Mandinka juubee.
CV djáki ‘bull calf’ < Wolof yëkk.
In this article, I examine the importance of this African stratum and explore what African
words and expressions in CV can tell us about the origins of this language and, more
generally, about the formation of Afro-European creoles.

Rastas, Anna 2019. ‘Lessons to Learn from the Story of Rosa’ , in Intertwined Histories. 150 years of Finnish-Namibian Relations, edited by Marjo Kaartinen, Leila Koivunen & Napandulwe Shiweda, University of Turku, pages 53-59. Available at: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-7829-8

This paper identifies several 15th/16th-century Portuguese (henceforth Classical Portuguese) features in four Portuguese-lexified creoles, i.e. (1) Cape Verdean Creole, (2) Guinea-Bissau Creole, (3) Papiamentu, and (4) Saramaccan. The last three share with each other the fact that they emerged in areas where social conditions for creolization were not met prior to the 17th century. Therefore, the presence of Classical Portuguese features in their core vocabulary and phonology requires an explanation. This paper argues that the shared features may have been inherited from Cape Verdean Creole.

Keywords: Classical Portuguese, Atlantic creoles, Cape Verdean, Guinea-Bissau, Papiamentu, Saramaccan, Upper Guinea, origins, diachrony